Everything Dies, Baby, That's A Fact
by panicandstartariot
Summary: The Winchesters through the decades, in an AU where Sam finds himself stuck at twenty-three years old.
1. Part One

Disclaimer: Well, it's so weird I doubt even Whedon could've come up with it, much less Kripke, so I'm gonna go ahead and say I don't own Supernatural.

Bruce Springsteen's 'Atlantic City' was kind of my soundtrack writing this (and the italicized bits are lyrics from said song), if you want some ambiance for your reading. Again, this is all majorly AU with a very strange premise, and there's character deaths and angst lying around like potholes on the Beltway, so consider yourself notified. I hope you like it.

- McKown

**Part One**

-

_Well now, everything dies, baby, that's a fact_

_But maybe everything that dies someday comes back…_

-

Dean is turning thirty and Sam is halfway through twenty-six when it occurs to Bobby, who's hosting the little birthday party (which consists mainly of three six-packs and ribs on the barbecue) that Sam has a bit of a baby-face, for someone who's now closer to the dreaded 3-0 than his roaring twenties. Sam wings him with an empty can and Dean makes fun of 'widdle Sammy' and the evening ends with all three of them drunk and singing Springsteen on the roof.

-

Dean is thirty-four and Sam is celebrating his thirtieth when, again, Bobby makes the same remark. This time there's a note of disbelief; they haven't seen him in person for almost a year, and he whistles, looks Sam up and down, and swears, "Boy, you haven't aged a day."

-

Dean is thirty-nine and Sam thirty-five when they finally acknowledge there's a problem. Dean's hair is beginning to gray at the temples, and there are lines sinking in around his eyes, but Sam is still getting carded once in a while. He looks twenty-four on a good day, and they start looking back in the journal for a cause- trickster, demons, witches, anything. And come up completely blank.

-

Dean is forty, unbelievably, and Sam is thirty-six the first time they bump the age on a fake ID down, rather than up. In Mariposa, California, they're called Agents John Deacon and Brian May (apparently no one around here listens to Skynyrd, Dean bitches, so they probably deserve the hauntings) and their badges say Deacon is forty and May twenty-seven. They still have no idea what caused this, but it's not exactly their biggest problem when you consider the spirits in Virginia, the ghoul nest waiting in Utah, a possible werewolf across the Canadian border…

-

Dean is forty-two and Sam thirty-eight the first time someone mistakes their relationship. They walk into the little diner, and Sam's just taken one to the head from a seriously pissed off wraith, so Dean has his hand on his brother's shoulder to keep him walking in a straight line. The waitress hands them menus and after getting Dean's order asks "And what'll your son have?" They both very conspicuously choke on their water.


	2. Part Two

**Part Two**

-

_Now, I been lookin' for a job, but it's hard to find_

_Down here it's just winners and losers and don't_

_Get caught on the wrong side of that line_

_Well, I'm tired of comin' out on the losin' end…_

-

Dean is forty-three and Sam has just turned thirty-nine. In the last, increasingly frantic year, they've tried a couple dozen rituals to figure out what's wrong with Sam and none of them has worked. They go so far as summoning a seriously powerful spirit from 'across the veil', who merely says "He is as he is" and then disappears. That night, Dean finally admits he's out of ideas, and he holds Sam as he sobs, and maybe adds some tears of his own.

-

Dean is forty-four and Sam is forty when they train a new hunter for the first time. His name is Brian O'Connell and he starts out careless and angry, but they temper him, travel with him, teach him, calling on the dusty memories of their father's way of creating soldiers. The Winchesters acquire a reputation as the best in the business, not just for their own hunting, but for creating hunters like themselves. After O'Connell there's Eileen Walker, Jon van den Valentine, Sondra Delaney, Zack Dauster, and, one astonishing day, Michael and Asher Roth from back in '06; a whole generation of these guys learn how to make rock-salt rounds and what the best incantation for a pissed ghost is from the Winchesters. When Michael and Asher take off, they leave a little Yoda keychain for Dean, and a note in Michael's handwriting says 'Sam- Big brothers always look out for little brothers. I'll try and keep the aging thing quiet.'

-

Dean is forty-eight and Sam a few weeks shy of forty-four and they're still hunting, though for the first time Dean's doing more of the research than his brother. They've had to come to terms with the fact that Sam is going to be faster and stronger from here on out, and he'll be the one running to meet danger headfirst while Dean waits in the shadows to strike. He complains from Philadelphia to Raleigh about being the sidekick now- that is, until Sam's nearly gutted by the damn shapeshifter, and Dean's driving eighty miles an hour down I-95 in terrified search of a hospital. In the E.R. he signs all the forms with fake names, and when Sam wakes up to the name 'Hector Aframian' Dean shakily informs him he's the older one and is always going to be better at these things.

-

Dean is fifty, and Sam is forty-six, but by now the years are taking their toll and Dean could pass for a good five or ten years older with his gray-flecked hair and lined face. Sam, on the other hand, looks twenty-three as ever, and they've stopped correcting waitresses who take them for father and son. They still, however, make faces when people mistake them for a couple. Sam really likes making the crack that he's 'antiquing' with Dean, to which he responds that lots of things get better with age and experience, thank you very much.

-

Dean is fifty-one and Sam is forty-seven when a wraith kills Bobby. At the morgue, his sister has called ahead to say that she wants her brother buried; Sam walks in with a suit on, calls himself Andy Singer, and says his father wanted a cremation. Bobby gets a hunter's funeral before his sister even makes it to town, by which point the Winchesters are halfway across the country killing a werewolf in their friend's memory.


	3. Part Three

**Part Three**

-

_Now our luck may have died and our love may be cold_

_But with you forever I'll stay_

_We're goin' out where the sand's turnin' to gold…_

-

Dean is fifty-two, the same age that John Winchester was when he died, and Sam is technically forty-eight. They've tried a whole new round of spells and talismans and one episode of black magic which has them both sworn off magic forever. Nothing works. Sam looks twenty-three, the same as he did when John Winchester died, and for the first time Dean watches his brother and realizes he's gotten the wish he made back after Cold Oak; short of a hunt gone wrong, he'll never have to live without Sammy. Never.

-

Dean is fifty-seven when they meet Lucy Willacy, who is thirty-three and calls Sam 'young man' when they show up at the church where her mother is being buried. They always figured Dean had an actual kid out there somewhere; Lucy tells Dean straight-up that her mom decided not to tell him she'd gotten pregnant from their week-long fling back in '02 because Dean was a great lay, but terrible father material. Lucy's a grown up, married with a baby on the way and a good job as a court stenographer and frankly, she doesn't need or want a dad. O'Connell, the Roth boys, Jon or Sondra are more Dean's kids than Lucy, but on the day her son is born, a savings account labeled 'College Fund' opens with a hundred bucks in it, and every month, another hundred is deposited for him. Many years later, Henry Willacy will graduate from UVA with a degree in mechanical engineering and a penchant for classic cars.

-

Dean is sixty and Sam fifty-six when they get a package at their Jamestown, North Dakota P.O. Box from one FBI Special Agent Barr. Inside are their official criminal files, documents proving credit fraud and grave robbing, and a printout indicating that the computer files on them have been removed from the central database. At the bottom of the stack of paper is a piece of construction paper covered in crayon scribbles, a crooked signature of 'AMANDA' in pencil. On the back, in clearer handwriting, is 'Without you two, I never would've grown up to have my daughter. I needed to say thank you. Enjoy the freedom, and don't get caught, okay? -Lucas'.

-

Dean is sixty-three when his kidneys begin to fail. Sam gives him one of his own, but the transplant- for what appears to be completely medical reasons – doesn't take, and rejection leaves Dean weak and on dialysis. The nurses call Sam an 'old soul' as he sits by his brother's bedside and makes jokes about things he looks too young to remember. Lucy comes to visit, but she's not nearly a close enough match to donate, even if she was willing, and she's awkward around the father she won't ever know. Jo Harvelle, surprisingly, is the one who appears- her own kids, college-aged twins Ash and Caleb, in tow – and offers the cabin Ellen built on the old Roadhouse lot years ago, now sitting unoccupied. It's the first home they've had in decades, and the first thing they unpack is the picture of John and Mary smiling for the camera.

-

Dean is sixty-four when he tells Sam there's just one job he needs to finish. The drive to Missouri isn't quiet, but that's because Dean has to blast his worn-out tapes at ear-shattering decibels just to mess with the other drivers rolling past in sleeker, more energy-efficient cars. He and Sam sing along, they talk about old hunts and Dad, they throw 'bitch' and 'jerk' back and forth so many times it becomes a chant. Cassie is widowed going on two years now; she gasps when she sees sixty-one-year-old Sam exactly as she remembers from 2005, but it's Dean she has to sit down for. Sam makes himself scarce for two weeks while Dean and Cassie work out all the things they've put off for way too long, and tries to work himself out alone.


	4. Part Four

**Part Four**

-

_Well, I guess everything dies, baby, that's a fact_

_Well maybe everything that dies some day comes back_

_So fix your hair up nice, do yourself up pretty,_

_And meet me tonight in Atlantic City…_

-

Dean is sixty-five when he goes to the Grand Canyon for the first time. He and Sam park on a nearby bluff to watch the expanse of blue-black sky transform into a panoramic sunrise that lights up the land in rich reds and gold. Seeing the Grand Canyon that day is amazing, and the vastness of it, the catch in his throat when he hears the rapids so far below, the sight of stone carved by a million years of water, mesmerizes him. But it's the hour or two before dawn in the darkness, lying on the hood of the Impala with his shoulder against Sam's, talking about a hundred inconsequential things that are code for 'I love you' and watching the stars spin over them in the patterns they've known since childhood- that's what sticks with him. He knows, in that split-second before the sun breaks the horizon, that this is what he wants to remember before he dies.

-

Sam is four months shy of sixty-two years old when he builds the funeral pyre just outside Lawrence, alone under the cold stars for the first time since he was twenty-two. After slipping the gold amulet around his own neck, he kisses Dean's forehead- creased with age, lines of worry and laughter and time – and adjusts their father's leather jacket around his shoulders, lays the two silver wedding rings on Dean's chest. Instead of a rosary, his hands are folded around an old sawed-off shotgun and a cassette tape of the Black Album. Sam holds a little plastic Yoda with the Impala's keys on it, and a leather journal with three sets of handwriting in it, all telling one story. The world has dwindled down to small things.

"You know what my first memory is, Dean?" he says as he scatters salt and kerosene over the pile of wood. "A hotel room, really in the early morning, and you woke me up so we could leave. I know you said something, or tickled me, or were singing…but I just remember looking up at your face and loving you. Total, unthinking love. I would've followed you anywhere."

There's no response, of course, from the body. Sam strokes a stray lock of gray hair off Dean's forehead, marveling at the face he knows now. It's different and yet the most familiar thing he's ever seen. Though his own face has been a constant for nearly four decades, now, it's Dean who was the rock.

"You were my brother, man. That was all you ever needed to be. Just you and me, on the road, together. That's all, in the end. You and me." He's shaking and sobbing by the end of it, but he manages to choke out "You're worth the chick-flick moment. You're worth everything."

He strikes the match, drops it onto the pyre, hears the whoosh of kerosene and salt igniting on dry wood. And a split-second after the first tendrils of fire lick at the body that was Dean Winchester, Sam explodes in flames, gone to ashes fast as lightning.

-

Dean is twenty-seven and Sam is twenty-three, and Dad is dead, and the world isn't as it should be, not even close. Sam prays with every fiber of his soul for them to get through this, just to survive long enough to fix things, I can't leave Dean alone, I can't. Dean screams just one question- Why me? – into the abyss, and hears nothing but his own haunting echo.

But not all prayers, or questions, are answered loud enough to hear; like a photograph, sometimes you have to wait for the results to bloom slowly. Sometimes it takes years to see the whole picture.

Sometimes it's not until Dean is turning thirty and Sam is halfway through twenty-six, when it occurs to Bobby, who's hosting the little birthday party (which consists mainly of three six-packs and ribs on the barbecue) that Sam has a bit of a baby-face, for someone who's now closer to the dreaded 3-0 than his roaring twenties. Sam wings him with an empty can and Dean makes fun of 'widdle Sammy' and the evening ends with all three of them drunk and singing Springsteen on the roof…

-


End file.
